Company Announcement - ID Logistics SA, part of global contract logistics company, launched its Atlas facility in Boksburg on the 1st October 2015 at an event that showcased its capabilities and network to all stakeholders. The launch was attended by some of the industry’s key representatives where Etienne Juillard, Managing Director at ID Logistics, spoke about ID Logistics’ journey in South Africa. “We began operations in South Africa by supporting the Danone network change strategy, which started with a tender process and culminated in the deployment of infrastructure. This all started in 2012, when the international ID Logistics team arrived in South Africa and took over the management of the Danone factory warehouse. By 2013, we had assisted with the system migration to ERP and Warehouse Management Systems,” said Juillard.
In 2013, ID Logistics took on the management of Danone’s primary transport services, and developed the information systems network. “Based on the successes achieved in 2012/2013, we started to build our own distribution facilities from the ground up. We appointed four dedicated hauliers and four co-loaders over the 16 sites that we manage. We are pleased that this year, as planned, we managed to roll out and go live with four distribution centres, 12 cross docks, and 200 secondary trucks,” added Juillard.
According to Juillard, this milestone has allowed the company to expand its operations to include 3PL services to other clients in the region, such as Patleys end-to-end cold chain collection at their distribution centre, multi cross docking activities and last mile distribution.
“In addition, we met Might Meats challenge of capacity by providing distribution to cope with their strong sales growth, which involves an evolutionary solution from last mile distribution to a fully integrated distribution and warehousing solution,” he commented.
Looking ahead, ID Logistics stated that as part of an international group, the South Africa counterpart uses set benchmarks that guide the group. “We are driven by innovation, and in future we will introduce technologies that are already implemented in other countries to add on to the quality service that we aim to provide to our customers. Other innovations incorporated in our warehouse include blue safety lights, a mobile receiving station that moves to the pallets. We soon will introduce double decker trucks to increase capacity,” concluded Juillard.